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So, Friday morning was pretty rough. There were a lot of tears shed and “why me? why us?” moments. I just couldn’t see how we could get a baby – both options seemed cost prohibitive with no guarantee of success.

I called Ken and asked if Danny and I could go look at dogs. He said sure, but not to get one. “Oh, don’t worry!” I said. “The shelter I’m going to won’t let you adopt unless all the members of the household are present, so we can’t adopt today, even if we want to!”

A few hours later, I called Ken again. “Umm… you need to come to the shelter. Now.” I swear Danny and I were just going to look. And we did look. We looked at all the dogs at PAWS. Some were way too big, some were way too hyper. We went into a visiting room with a little black dog that Danny liked, but I didn’t feel he was right for us. We were about to leave. We were going to walk out of there with no dog at all, but at least a pleasant time.

And then we saw this scruffy little guy. All the shelter knew was that he was some sort of Schnauzer mix, about a year old. He sat there patiently looking at us. Didn’t jump. Didn’t bark, or cry, or whine. Just smiling in that doggy way. His name was Domino, but he didn’t answer to it, so it would be easily changed. We took him up on the shelter’s rooftop deck and played fetch and chase and he and Danny fell in love right away.

I couldn’t bear the thought of having to leave Domino there and risk someone else adopting him. There was actually another guy at the shelter also looking at him, and I was ready to get in a bidding war or subtly intimidate the guy. Luckily, Ken did show up in time to discover that since Domino is also some sort of Poodle mix, he didn’t set off his allergies. After lots of promises from both Daniel and me that we would take care of the dog, we officially adopted him.

I am so in love with this dog. He is good natured, even tempered, pretty quiet (mostly), and best of all, completely housetrained. Even with the stress of moving to a new house with a new family, he has had no accidents so far. I think we are insanely, unbelievably lucky to have found him.

We tossed around a bunch of names. At first we thought about naming him Peregrine and calling him Perry (after my favorite Hobbit and Daniel’s favorite secret agent platypus), but it just didn’t suit him. I asked Danny who his favorite book or movie character is, and he responded right away with Benny (from the Boxcar Children series). Hmmm… Benny… Bennett? He came right away when we said it. So I guess he named himself. We will still call him Benny for short.

Don’t get me wrong – I’m still really sad about the bad news from Friday. It’s hard to give up the idea of having another child. I don’t think we’ve shut the door completely on the idea, but we’re definitely not going to move forward on either of the two options for quite some time.

Right now, the house feels pretty full to me with one cat, one dog, one boy, and a husband. Bennett follows me everywhere, and likes to sleep on the floor by my side of the bed. After three years with a cat who clearly prefers Ken, it’s kind of nice to have an animal on my side!